Text:

Interviewer: “S, tell me your story whenever you’re ready.”

SA: “Okay. So, my uncle had moved into a house a couple years ago, and my grandparents and my aunt had helped him move in. 
And while they were looking at the house, they really liked it. He was able to get everything unpacked. But he and his wife, a couple weeks or months after he had moved in, weird things started happening. 
Like, while he was home alone and his wife was at work, lights shut on and off, or he would hear things around the house, which shouldn’t have been possible because he was home alone. So after a while, with all these strange things happening, um, he decided to call, uh, like, a ghost specialist. Like a, like a priest or something like that. 
And basically the priest went through the house and saged it. Then he got somebody who he wanted to just check deeper into what was happening. But basically this person was asking a bunch of questions. 
They’re like, yeah, there is something definitely off about the house. We just don’t know what it is. And as they kept asking him more and more questions, they finally asked him something that really clicked to him, which was, ‘do you have a mirror in your garage?’ 
And he was like, yes, like, how did you know? They were like, ‘where did you like get this mirror?’ 
And basically he had told them, he said, he had gotten this mirror, which was ike, it was almost like a cultural thing around the mirror. It was like a face on top of this tiny mirror that was in his garage. 
And he told the priest or whoever it was, come in and check the house, that he had got it from a garage sale, and then the person told him you need to get rid of it immediately, because there was a spirit attached to it. And that is what was happening in the house. And basically, they told them, don’t ever bring things back from garage sales, because you never know why the person is even trying to sell it. 
Because it was a really nice mirror. So why were they trying to sell it for not a lot of money in the first place? And as soon as he got rid of the mirror, all of the weird things disappeared.”

Interviewer: “Thank you so much. Um, what do you think of the story? Do you believe it?”

SA: “My uncle… My uncle likes to lie a lot. So what do I think? 
I thought he was lying. But what made me really believe it is that his wife was also saying these things were happening and she isn’t a liar. So it’s probably true.”

Interviewer: 
”What do you think about it?”

SA: “About what?”

Interviewer: “The ghost and whether or not you believe in it or believe in ghosts in general.”

SA: “
I believe that stuff like that can happen. I believe things like that could happen, but I also believe it could be things other than ghosts.”

Interviewer: “Like such as?”

SA: 
“The wind?”

Context:

She was told the story when she was 13, and her uncle was about 39. He grew up in Oregon, and he was unemployed at the time of the story. He told this story to her in the living room of her grandparents house. The actual setting of the story took place in St. John’s, Oregon.

Analysis:

This is a clear example of peer / familial groups and their influence on ghost stories. The informant, knowing her uncle, was fairly certain he was probably not telling the truth. However, because of her aunt’s testament, she believed it. This story also follows typical ghostly motifs (flickering lights, strange noises, etc.)